


Rebirth

by Tousled_Sky



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, Kinda, Major Injury, Oneshot, Other, Regret, Shizaya - Freeform, The Shizaya is implied and one sided, a lot of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 11:04:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8622127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tousled_Sky/pseuds/Tousled_Sky
Summary: "It was if the strands of black hair that curtained his eyes were the ash-covered, downy feathers of a hatchling phoenix." While in the hospital, Izaya tries something new.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfiction I wrote a few months ago. It's less gay and more angsty than the first work I put up (Daybreak). Hope you enjoy it, loves~

In his earlier days, Izaya didn't believe in regret. He thought his life should be lived without such a thing - after all, what was the point of focusing on the past, on things that couldn't be changed?  
But when you're lying in the hospital with two broken arms and internal bleeding, while in terrible amounts of pain, it's hard to block out all thoughts of "I wish I had avoided the events that led me here." It's hard to not regret it.  
And so Izaya, grudgingly, let himself regret something. And when he did, he saw the emotion from a new angle. Originally, he had seen regret as a useless emotion - one that made you hate yourself for fucking up in the past, over something you could no longer change. And though it was certainly true that regret led him to chastise himself for seeking out Shizuo that night, which had resulted in his current painful, mostly immobilized state, it did more than that. It also lent him a power - the insight to choose whether to do or not to do similar things in the future. The chance to truly learn from his mistakes, and apply that knowledge accordingly.  
When you don't regret anything, there's no reason to evolve, to grow. But when you confront your wrongdoings and feel regret for them, the motivation to change arises.  
Regretting his actions made Izaya see that it was, in fact, stupid to taunt and torment and antagonize Shizuo to the point that he tried to kill Izaya. The regret wasn't confined to Shizuo, either; Shizuo was only one facet of his life. A big part of his life, but only one person. No, the regret also spread to other parts of his memories; things he'd done that had been mistakes in hindsight. It gave him a lot to contemplate in that hospital room.  
He regretted not taking the olive branches that his family had offered over the years, until the offers became more apprehensive and less frequent and eventually just stopped. Regret for not only avoiding reconciling with them, but going so far as to actively push them away. For making other people lives hell, and therefore, driving away anyone who may have shown him kindness. In short, he regretted intentionally isolating himself from any sort of friendly human contact.  
But there was one human in particular he wished he had made a better effort to get along with. There was a staggering amount of regret he felt over Shizuo. For being so vile to him. For hating him while they were so, in truth, alike. They were both monsters in their own right; less so when independent of each other, but tenfold that when in conjugation. Shizuo destroyed things because of Izaya. Izaya tormented Shizuo because Shizuo's destruction amused him. They were monsters because of each other.  
Well, mainly because of Izaya. If he hadn't been such an ass that first day at school - clapping condescendingly at the crazy kid who had just beaten up two dozen punks - maybe they could have avoided a lot of fights. Maybe even gotten along. Been mutually beneficial to one another. Maybe even have been friends. Perhaps they could have chased the crazy out of each other, instead of fueling it until it consumed them.  
But he had been cruel instead of kind, and Shizuo was the furthest thing from a friend Izaya had.   
Izaya regretted giving a smirk instead of a smile in the moment that they met.  
Of course, this didn't bode well with Izaya. He had never felt regret before, so he didn't know how to deal with it - much less so much of it at once. It led to a lot of issues, yet despite the emotional turmoil it brought him, the regret changed Izaya. It gave him space and reasons to grow. It made him a better person by letting him dislike his previous life; the life in which he had hurt himself and the people around him. Made him want to start a new life in which the actions he took lead him to a better endpoint than this one.  
Izaya Orihara died in that hospital room, and a new person was born. From the ashes of Izaya's soul rose a new life; it was if the strands of black hair that curtained red eyes were the ash-covered, downy feathers of a hatchling phoenix. Regret gives rise to rebirth.  
As Henry David Thoreau said, "To regret deeply is to live afresh".


End file.
